From the invisible profession to a profession of truth.

A column like this usually ties to some article in the same issue of the Journal or to some current event taking place in the association. This time around, I actually want to refer you back to the last issue of the Journal and, more specifically, to the third and final installment of our special series on environmental health and the media.

In fact, I would have written this column for the last Journal if we had not been featuring our special report on the avian flu in that issue. Given the potential that avian flu has to cause a significant impact on our profession, I had to devote my column in that Journal to our special report.

In that issue of the Journal, however, we also published what may well have been the best article yet to come from our "Inside the Profession" Journal feature--the third installment of Rebecca Berg's series on our profession and the media. This article was so good and instructive that I want to speak to it here--even though I'm a month behind. If you haven't yet had the opportunity to read it, I encourage you to do so.

When I first outlined for Rebecca why we wanted to do such a story, my focus was on the difficulty that environmental health has had in getting the media to portray our fascinating story in a more flattering light. In addition, I asked her to investigate how we could become more successful in drawing more media coverage and recognition to our work and our people.

My guidance for Rebecca derived in large measure from the complaints NEHA members have expressed over the lack of positive (and, in some instances, any!) media coverage of our profession. In directing our Journal staff to dig into this issue, our intention was therefore to come up with ideas and, if possible, some success stories that could then be used by others to further our goal of making our invisible profession more visible and more respected. If we could provide you with some real-life examples of how to better present to the media (and perhaps even some criticism of what we aren't doing well), then collectively, the profession might begin to create within the public mind a more favorable (and accurate) impression of the work we do, the public good we serve, and the kind of people we are.

With these ideas as guidance, our Journal reporter took off. By the time she was done, we had not one article but a three-part series. Moreover, by simply following the trail where her many interviews had led her, Rebecca had found her way into issues that none of us anticipated when the original assignment was scoped out. In my humble opinion, the result may well be some of the best and most helpful material that we have ever published in the pages of this publication.

In brief, this series should have helped all of us to understand that the issue of media relations requires far more than an "us-versus-them" perspective or a "you-don't-understand-us" victimology. The series gave us insight into the world of the media and the ways we frustrate reporters as much as they frustrate us. It gave us some helpful ideas about how we might tailor our stories to better fit their needs while at the same time preserving our truths and points. It also gave us many helpful hints as to what we can do to better get across the points that we want known. I particularly liked Rebecca's concluding comment that we could make a more significant impact if we were less stoic and more proud of who we are and what we do when we speak to members of the media. In all these ways and then some, the series accomplished what it set out to do.

As helpful as the main gist of her report was, it was the surprising side stories that I found particularly interesting. One such thread spoke to the way both science and journalism see themselves as disciplines that seek out truths.

This point, noted in the last installment of the series, became interesting to me when Rebecca observed that not all professions operate with the mission to find truth. Some seek to persuade, others to make or build--to give some examples of differences. And as she so poignantly noted, even in journalism, modern-day pressures are such that truth often ends up being a secondary consideration in a media report.

As it happens, I am in the middle of another interesting read--Jack Welch's book Winning. The dirtiest little secret in business, Welch argues, is "lack of candor," meaning that people often say what they think others want to hear, even if such comments veer far from the truth. We do so, he says, for fear that if we spoke the truth and the truth was bad, we would be blamed, labeled as a troublemaker or an uncooperative person, or both. In other words, just as I was reading Rebecca's report about how truth isn't always an end point, here I was reading from a business baron that truth is also not always the basis for decision making in business.

As I tried to come to terms with the idea that truth might not have the sanctity in this modern world of ours that we in science ascribe to it, I could find no reason why environmental health should ever be anything but truthful. Especially in our dealings with the media, an insistence on truth might actually help us to create that public respect for our profession that we crave. As Welch notes in his book, being candid and telling the truth creates trust. And nothing bonds like trust. If the publics we serve come to realize that in this day in which no one can seemingly trust anyone, they can at least trust their local environmental health programs, then we will have achieved a public recognition and bond that will truly be the envy of others.

Welch acknowledges that bluntly speaking the truth will often turn people away before the message is ever heard. So, even in his quest for more candor in the business workplace, he advises that the truth be presented with some craft and sensitivity. In environmental health we might benefit from learning how to be better presenters. But ... the fundamental point remains. No matter the politics, the political correctness, or the temptations to do otherwise, our duty is to report the truth as our science has revealed it. As Richard Mass noted in Rebecca's last article, "'Whatever the truth is, that's the truth, and you have to speak it as objectively as you can, and you're not whispering, and you just don't worry about any of that [what the focus groups want]. As long as you're speaking the truth from a knowledgeable, pure place, everything will work out.'"

For my money, I think that's the most powerful insight of all to come from this enlightening three-part series. If we could work on (proudly) emphasizing the truth that our science sees, perhaps we might evolve from being the invisible profession to being known as a profession of truth And wouldn't that be a change for the better?

Nelson Fabian, M.S.

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